The Digital Enterprise Research Institute, NUI Galway is pleased to announce that the Second Web Science Trust Doctoral Summer School will be held in DERI from July 6th until July 13th, 2011
The Web is the largest technological artefact in existence, comprising a global network of information sites and services. It is a social machine, delivering information between people and communities, embedded in almost all processes of human society: education, medicine, science and technology, commerce, entertainment and social activity. It is often simply supposed that the Web is a neutral technology, a stable computing platform for the delivery of information and services. What is overlooked is that the Web is changing constantly in response to the demands of human society. Incremental innovations leads to changes in how people use the Web and in turn how Web technology responds to changed human interaction. Small technological decisions influence how individuals use the Web and ripple out to have unanticipated macro-effects. Sometimes these effects are beneficial such as the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies. Other technologies such as the rise of spam bots or 'blackhat' search engine optimisation techniques clutter the Web with irrelevant, distracting information. While influential corporations such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft generate huge revenues from the Web, the Web itself is owned by everyone and no-one. We need to fully understand the demands placed on the Web by human society, so that its fate does not lead to a 'tragedy of the commons' but to a sustainable technological resource for the future. |